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Jerry Bock, ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ Composer, Dies at 81

Jerry Bock, who wrote his first musical in public school and went on to compose the scores for some of Broadway’s most successful shows, including “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Fiorello!” and “She Loves Me,” died on Wednesday in Mount Kisco, N.Y. He was 81 and lived in Manhattan.

His death, at a Mount Kisco hospital, was caused by heart failure, his lawyer, Richard M. Ticktin, said.

Mr. Bock died 10 days after the death of Joseph Stein, who wrote the book for “Fiddler.”

Early in his life Mr. Bock wrote music for television shows and did some work on Broadway, primarily on the score for “Mr. Wonderful” (1956), which starred Sammy Davis Jr. The title song became a standard, along with “Too Close for Comfort.”

But Mr. Bock’s career shifted into high gear when he met the lyricist Sheldon Harnick. Their first effort, “The Body Beautiful” (1958), about the woes of a prizefight manager, closed in just a few weeks. But it paid a significant dividend for Mr. Bock and Mr. Harnick: it caught the attention of George Abbott and Harold Prince, who asked them to work on a new project, a musical about Fiorello H. La Guardia, the former mayor of New York.

A show’s score was not simply an accompaniment for spectacle; it grew naturally out of the story being told, and Mr. Bock proved adept at writing music that reflected both time and circumstance. Mr. Harnick’s lyrics did the same. As Mr. Harnick put it, the goal was “to try and recreate the sound of a period musically.”

“Fiorello!” opened to raves in 1959 and ran for nearly two years. Tom Bosley, who died on Oct. 19, played the feisty mayor.

With songs like “Little Tin Box,” “Politics and Poker” and “The Very Next Man,” the show was not only a box-office hit but also an award winner, winding up with six Tonys and a Pulitzer Prize. Years later, recalling that “Fiorello!” had shared the Tony for best musical with “The Sound of Music” by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Mr. Bock said, “We were in extraordinary company.”

Mr. Bock and Mr. Harnick went on to write the music and lyrics for “Tenderloin” (1960), with Maurice Evans as a crusading clergyman; “She Loves Me” (1963), with Barbara Cook and Daniel Massey as love-struck workers in a perfume shop in Budapest; and then, in 1964, their greatest triumph, “Fiddler on the Roof.” The show ran until the summer of 1972, and for a while it was Broadway’s record holder, with more than 3,200 performances.

With a book written by Mr. Stein and based on stories by Sholem Aleichem, “Fiddler” was a musical portrait of a Jewish community under threat of expulsion by the Russian czar. Its songs became popular standards: “Sunrise, Sunset,” “Matchmaker, Matchmaker,” “Tradition” and, of course, the rueful “If I Were a Rich Man,” sung by the show’s star, Zero Mostel, as Tevye the penniless milkman.

Directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins, the show received nine Tony Awards — Mr. Bock and Mr. Harnick won as best composer and lyricist — and “Fiddler” went on to become a theatrical staple, frequently revived in the United States and around the world.

In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Harnick said he had usually woven in the lyrics after Mr. Bock had written the music. In one instance, he said, he became dangerously enraptured by his partner’s music.

“I was working a number for ‘She Loves Me.’ It was called ‘Tonight at 8.’ I was walking around New York singing the melody to myself, trying to write lyrics, and I stepped in front of truck. The driver slammed on the brakes, honked his horn. I looked up, startled, and then kept right on walking, working on the song. Jerry told me to be more careful.”

Jerrold Lewis Bock was born on Nov. 23, 1928, in New Haven, the only child of George Bock, a salesman, and the former Peggy Alpert. He grew up in Flushing, Queens, where he wrote his first musical, “My Dream,” while still in Flushing High School.

Photo

Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick in 1970.Credit
Barton Silverman/The New York Times

When he was a senior at the University of Wisconsin, he and a classmate, Larry Holofcener, wrote another musical, “Big as Life,” about Paul Bunyan. After graduation they both went to New York, where they were hired to write songs for “The Admiral Broadway Revue,” which evolved into “Your Show of Shows,” the popular vehicle for Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca.

In 1955 Mr. Bock and Mr. Holofcener contributed music and lyrics to the musical “Catch a Star,” which was a flop, before joining with George Weiss to write the score for “Mr. Wonderful.” Mr. Bock married Patricia Faggen in 1950. She survives him, along with their son, George; their daughter, Portia Bock; and a granddaughter.

For the Bock-Harnick team, “Fiddler” proved a hard act to follow. “The Apple Tree,” a three-act musical drawn from stories by Mark Twain, Frank R. Stockton and Jules Feiffer, was a more modest success, opening in 1966 and closing the next year after 463 performances. Directed by Mike Nichols, it starred Alan Alda and Barbara Harris.

In his review in The Times, Walter Kerr noted that the show “starts high and then scoots downward on a pretty steep slope.” The music and lyrics, however, brought Mr. Bock and Mr. Harnick Tony nominations.

They then collaborated on “The Rothschilds” (1970), with a book by Sherman Yellen, based on Frederic Morton’s biography about the powerful banking family. The show, starring Hal Linden, Jill Clayburgh and Paul Hecht, overcame a mixed reception and ran for 505 performances. As the show was being prepared, Mr. Bock and Mr. Harnick had a bitter falling out over whether the director, Derek Golby, lacked experience and should be replaced by Michael Kidd.

Mr. Harnick finally went on record about the dispute in 2004. “We had severe artistic differences,” he said. “I felt, as many on the staff did, that the director should be fired. Bock was a big defender of him. He was fired, and there was a very big strain between Jerry and I.”

The dispute ended the Bock-Harnick partnership. The bitterness eased over time, and they occasionally met to discuss revivals of their shows, but they never wrote another one together.

After “The Rothschilds,” and after 14 tumultuous and largely successful years as a creative force on Broadway, Mr. Bock stepped away from the spotlight, more or less for good. A late-career accolade came this year, however, when he shared an Emmy for an original children’s song. Its title: “A Fiddler Crab Am I.”

Dennis Hevesi contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on November 4, 2010, on page A27 of the New York edition with the headline: Jerry Bock, ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ Composer, Dies at 81. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe